


from S-EA to shining S-EA

by callunavulgari



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pap or Die, Romantic Friendship, Royalty, Sister-Sister Relationship, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t know who had the clever idea to have you and your sister rule the empire together, but if you ever find out, you are going to have some <i>words</i> with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from S-EA to shining S-EA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [addy_is_not_a_laddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/addy_is_not_a_laddy/gifts).



> It was a struggle to choose between this prompt and a certain one with Alpha Rose, but in the end I settled on this, because writing Meenah was a pleasure before and I wanted to try my hand at Feferi. Sadly, my new job took up a great deal of my time and this couldn't be the 50k+ space opera that it wanted to turn into, but I may come back and expand on it in the future. Hope you like it, Addy!

You don’t know who had the clever idea to have you and your sister rule the empire together, but if you ever find out, you are going to have some _words_ with them.  
  
You suppose that you should be grateful that it isn’t just going to be you facing Her Imperious Condescension come ascension, but you can never really find it in you to be gracious about it, considering that Meenah is possibly the _worst_ troll for the job.  
  
Your sister is three sweeps older than you and until you came along, was the only candidate for the crown. Then you crawled your way free of the brooding caverns and slipped into the sea, following the siren call of your mother’s songs, and that’s how Meenah found you—this tiny pink grub curled up on Gl'bgolyb’s smallest tentacle.  
  
From what you understand, there was, as your sister would put it, a shit storm of epic proportions. Until that point, there’d never been two fuschia blooded clutch mates. Having a sister or a brother wasn’t unheard of—it _happened_ —but was rare enough that no one ever considered what may happen if there were two imperial heirs.  
  
You don’t know what happened that day when Meenah, still the littlest of fish herself, found you cuddled up on mom. Maybe she was jealous. Maybe she’d thought of obliterating you before you became a problem, but mom’s sharp beak stayed her hand. Or maybe, just maybe, she looked at you and saw something there—a future, the two of you ruling Alternia hand in hand.  
  
Unlikely, you know, but with Meenah, who knows.  
  
By the time you became aware enough to realize what was going on around you, the fact that one day the two of you would rule Alternia together was already a fact, set in stone. Your crown of gold, pearls, and fish-bone had already been created, a perfect match to Meenah’s.  
  
Your earliest memories are hazy in the way that all grub’s memories tend to be, but you remember Gl'bgolyb. You remember your mom and her clever songs, and the absence of a sister that she sang to you of. Mom told you all about her, Gl'bgolyb’s wayward girl, the one who dropped off lusii while you were sleeping and absconded before you could wake up.  
  
You don’t think you even met Meenah until you were three sweeps yourself, exhausted from hunting your very first lusus for mom and absentmindedly kicking your way over to Eridan’s hive when you almost smacked straight into her. A whole ocean of space and the two of you had nearly collided.  
  
She was small for six sweeps, this tiny, gangly thing that you wouldn’t have known from another violetblood if it weren’t for your sign and your color woven into her clothes. She’d blinked at you through her goggles, surprised into inaction, and you remember thinking how strange it was, that she hadn’t flashed you her teeth.  
  
Awareness came to her and then came the teeth, sharp and white as yours, like pretty shark’s teeth glittering on the ocean floor.  
  
“Watch it, guppie,” she’d hissed, more annoyed than angry, and just kept swimming.  
  
Later, Eridan had braided your hair, and you’d told him about it in halting sentences, nerves making your stomach flutter.  
  
He’d hesitated when you finally paused for breath, your mouth pulled into a frown, and stroked your hair absentmindedly.  
  
“You’ll know her soon enough,” he’d told you and you made a face at him.  
  
It was true enough, of course, because a few perigrees down the road, you and her would move into the palace, and nothing would ever be the same.  
  
.  
  
The year you turn six, two things happen.  
  
First, you break up with Eridan. You feel terrible about it, memories lighting up your skull like glow fish, insisting that it was supposed to be forever. Memories lie and yours remind you of all the times when you were small, when your collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system had fluttered in his presence, when you really thought that it was serendipity.  
  
The second thing that happens is that you get a holo from the Condesce.  
  
You're alone when it happens, because Meenah hasn’t stayed in the palace two nights in a row since she first moved in, and are completely and utterly terrified.  
  
The Condesce looks nothing like you or Meenah. She’s tall, taller than any other troll you’ve met—eight plus feet of nightmares without the horns and a slash of fuschia across her lips. She smirks at you, this smooth curl of pink, like she knows that she doesn’t even have to show her teeth to have you cowering. You sit there, trembling in just your wetsuit, and stare at her as she doesn’t say anything. Finally, after several moments of nothing, she stops watching you like she wants to eat you and starts polishing her claws.  
  
“Where’s your sister, small fry?” she asks, not even glancing away from her claws. They’re painted bright pink and the amount of gold dripping from her fingers makes Meenah’s collection seem small.  
  
“Somewhere,” you answer, your voice small. You can’t make out much of what’s going on behind her, but there’s a smear of yellow on the wall, and you wonder if she’s making this call from the helmsblock.  
  
She gives you a flat, poisonous look. You want to cower—to grovel. You’ve read the history books in your library, have heard the songs your mom has sang about her, about your not-mother, your not-sister, the thousand sweep old monster that haunts the stars, forever expanding the great reach of the Alternian Empire.  
  
“ _Whaaaale_ , find her,” she demands and you flinch.  
  
“She isn’t here, Your Imperious Condescension,” you say, reminding yourself over and over again that she can’t get you, not now, not when she’s thousands of miles away—can’t harpoon you like the suckerfish you are without bein’ right in front of you.  
  
The Condesce pouts at you, but her eyes are still flat; this is all for show, this talk. You don’t even know what she wants, just that you’re both supposed to be here and _Meenah isn’t_.  
  
She huffs and you almost expect bubbles, in a way that a fish who ain’t ever been out of the sea wouldn’t expect air.  
  
“You tell her then, guppie,” she sighs. “You got a sweep before the people expect you to fish or cut bait.”  
  
You stare at her, unsure, and she sighs _again_ , all put upon and woe is me.  
  
“Princesses ain’t expected to stay on da homeworld, shrimp. You two better get your swim on now and snag yourself a starship. The Empire ain’t just trolls no more, Princess. You gotta get your hooks in and gut a couple small fry before the big fish’ll bow to you.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this?” you ask her, curious enough to forget your fear for a moment.  
  
She grins at you and there are the teeth, long and needle sharp. “‘Cause, tuna. It ain’t gonna be no fun harpoonin’ you and your sister sweeps from now if it ain’t a challenge.”  
  
Then, just like that, she’s gone.  
  
.  
  
You find Meenah with a Serket, miles and miles from the sea.  
  
Finding her wasn’t easy. When you couldn’t find her in the miles around the palace, you asked mom, who hadn’t been much help either. So you’d surfaced—felt the sand on your feet and the moonlight in your hair.  
  
The lowbloods were frightened of you. They cowered, scattering when they saw your sign. You wanted to soothe them, if only because looking for your sister when no one would stay still long enough to point you in the right direction was a pain. They were your people too and they were too frightened of you to even talk.  
  
After a day of this, you’d taken a drab brown robe from a street vendor’s recently vacated stall and draped the hood over your fins—covered your wetsuit and your sign in old, musty smelling fabric.  
  
It was easier, after that. Eventually, you’d found a nice olive blood who shared a bit of gossip with you—that one of the heirs had been this way with a blue blood spider bitch; her words, not yours.  
  
Aranea Serket was easier to find than a missing princess and when you’d knocked on her door, Meenah had answered in naught but her skin, grinning all sly and snarky until she realized it was you.  
  
“Oh,” she’d sighed, rolling her eyes theatrically. “It’s you.”  
  
You were the good one, you reminded yourself. You were the troll who stayed her lessons and did what she was supposed to do. If it were up to Meenah, mom would have starved sweeps ago and all the lowbloods would be dead, and then where would the empire be?  
  
You reminded yourself of all of these things, biting your lip on the urge to tear out her throat. You still couldn’t keep the irritation out of your voice when you smiled sweet and hissed, “Yes, it’s me.”  
  
Another gusty sigh and you were being subjected to the sight of your sister’s bare ass as she turned away from you. “Guess you’d betta come in then.”  
  
The Serket girl’s hive is big, but nothing like yours. It’s strange, seeing things from the land dweller side of the spectrum.  
  
Meenah leads you into a large living area where another troll, the Serket girl, you assume, is flopped across the couch, just as naked. She, at least, yelps when you follow Meenah in, removing the hood as you go, and attempts to cover up. Meenah, unconcerned, just flops down next to her, grinning in your direction. There’s no invitation to sit or make yourself at home, so you don’t. You stand there, glaring at your sister.  
  
“So, whatchu want?”  
  
You bite your tongue on your first response, which largely consists of various curses you’d heard on your way here.  
  
“Her Imperious Condescension contacted me,” you tell her, viciously pleased when the color drains from Meenah’s face. “She thinks it’s high tide we got off this rock, see the rest of the empire.”  
  
“Why?” she asks, the lax posture fading from her bones as her spine goes straight, leaning towards you. “You know she’s probably just jerkin’ your chain, right? Every troll knows that she’s just waitin’ to skewer us. She pro _bubbly_ wants to get us away from mom so she can do it sooner.”  
  
You bite your lip. You’d considered that, for a little while, when you were busy trolling Sollux and freaking out. But even if that was the case, she had a point. The empire wasn’t just trolls anymore. When they ruled, the Alternian Empire as a whole would bow to them, and that included all the races they’d conquered—all those aliens, spread out across the stars. It couldn’t hurt, to get their support.  
  
You tell her as much, barely even noticing when the Serket girl gets up to go put on some clothes.  
  
“But—” Meenah starts, hesitating when you frown at her. “I ain’t frontin’, I don’t know shit ‘bout politics, but don’t ya think we oughta get our own people coverin’ our backs first?”  
  
You think of Eridan, who would have tried to kill the Condesce herself if it would have made your life easier; of Sollux, who’d been a line of text away from offering the other night. You still don’t have many friends, but people like Karkat, Aradia, and even Vriska—you think that they would help you, if you asked.  
  
“Yes,” you say, distracted when Aranea sidles back into the room. “But we can do that from space too. There’s billions of trolls spread through the systems, we don’t have to stick to this planet to get their support.”  
  
Meenah makes a face at you and you realize suddenly, that she’s scared. With that thought comes another—that maybe the reason she’s been so scarce is that she doesn’t want to rule with you.  
  
“We have to have a plan, Meenah,” you say. “We can’t just go up to the Condesce on ascension and throw a culling fork at her. We have to do this right or we’ve got no hope of winning. And even if we win, what then? We suck so bad at ruling together that we split the empire into factions?” You shake your head, feeling your hair brush against the small of your back.  
  
“We have to do this right,” you say again, firmly.  
  
Meenah stares at you, her eyes already bleeding through pink. Her eyes are like the draining granules sand inside an hourglass—once they turn pink, she’ll be an adult, and then, well, then the two of you better be ready.  
  
“Where we even gonna get a ship like that, then?” she finally sighs, slumping back onto the couch.  
  
“We’ll find one.”  
  
“And a helmsman?” she asks, shrewd. “Don’t think your little piss blood would be all that keen on makin’ like a vegetable so we can get across the galaxy.”  
  
That’s the thing though. You know that he would. If you asked him, Sollux would. He’d told you himself.  
  
“Actually,” Serket says, clearing her throat. You blink at her, suddenly remembering her presence. She shifts from foot to foot in a manner that conveys either nerves or a need to relieve herself. “One does not have to be in a comatose state to be a helmsman, it is simply easier for all involved.”  
  
.  
  
It takes a bit more of an explanation and even more research before you even think of glubbing about this to Sollux. It’s a strange few nights, arguing things out with Meenah as Aranea tiptoes around you both, like she’s three steps away from flipping ash on the both of you even though neither of you need a stinkin’ middle leaf. During the day you sleep restlessly on Aranea’s spare bed, your gills too dry and the yowls of the dead outside startling you awake more often than not.  
  
Eventually, Aranea convinces you to troll Sollux.  
  
You can tell that he’s uncomfortable, but he agrees easily enough, especially after you bring up all the points that Aranea made.  
  
After that, it’s as easy as getting a starship and a crew.  
  
.  
  
You and Meenah kill mom together. You hate yourself for it, hate how she coos a greeting—this thrilled little sound—that both of her girls are with her, finally.  
  
You watch the grief and anger wind itself tight within Meenah as mom sings her final song, a lullaby, because she is immense and ancient, and she has always known how this was going to go.  
  
Her blood stains the water pink, so when you cry, not even you notice.  
  
.  
  
You’re three sweeps into your trip around the stars when you realize that Meenah’s eyes are perfectly purple-pink through and through. Yours are already beginning to turn, flecks of pink amongst the gray, but Meenah—  
  
Meenah is an adult.  
  
And you both know what that means.  
  
.  
  
You’re living on borrowed time now, gallivanting around the universe with your merry group of jerks. You spend most of your time in the helmsblock, curled up in a seat next to Sollux as you tell him all about your days. He knows most of it, of course. He is, after all, the ship. He is everywhere around you and unlike most helmsman, he’s still himself enough to grin at you when you waltz in and press a kiss to his cheek.  
  
You wonder, sometimes, if he resents you for reducing him to this—his body little more than a husk due to sweeps of disuse—but then you come to see him and he lights up so perfectly that you don’t know why you ever doubted it.  
  
You’ve picked up some humans along the way, along with various other species. You know that they don’t all love you—some of them seem to outright hate you and your sister—but they have something more important than love inside of them. They have belief. Belief that under your rule, things will be better. And though you would prefer to be loved, you’ll let them keep their hatred if it fuels their fires in your pursuit of the throne.  
  
Most days, things are quiet on your ship. Space is a huge place and sometimes a week will pass before Sollux gets you to another planet. You take your meals in your chamber, sometimes with Karkat or Aradia, but more often than not, you’re alone.  
  
It’s a lonely thing, being you, but you have your buoy, your starship, your love. You have your sister, you think, even if you only see her when you’re fighting, and you have Rose, the glorious human that you’d picked up on a spaceport a dozen star systems away from Alternia.  
  
She feels like mom, the whisper of horrorterrors all but dripping out of her skull, and is the best tactician you have aboard.  
  
“You need to find a solution to this, Feferi,” she tells you one day, seated demurely on a violet chaise and sipping her tea calmly. The mirror hanging on the wall is cracked from how hard Meenah had slammed the door on her way out and you want to rend and tear at things until the anger stops simmering away at your guts. Rose must see something in your expression, because she smirks, and says, “Don’t make me pap you, Peixes.”  
  
“I just want to _krill_ her sometimes,” you shriek. Rose barely blinks, reaching over to pat your thigh with her free hand. The gesture feels almost too pale to you, still chafes at the back of your thinkpan, but you’ve come to expect it from most humans. It’s rare, from Rose, but she accompanies it with a smile, so you _think_ she may be teasing you.  
  
“Fix this,” she repeats, the smile dimming a bit as she sets down her tea. “Our plan may bear fruit hundreds of times over, yet still fail if the two of you cannot prove to cooperate with one another.”  
  
You sigh.  
  
.  
  
Karkat is, predictably, the one who comes up with the plan.  
  
“I can’t just _make_ myself pale for someone,” you hiss at him, fins flared wide in offense. He snorts at you and for a moment, you truly regret the fact that he no longer takes your anger seriously.  
  
“You won’t have to force it,” he explains, shrugging. “You two fuckfins have been swimming back and forth between hate and pity for years—don’t even deny it!”  
  
You pout at him and with a huff, collapse backwards into your chair. Beside you, Sollux snickers.  
  
“I don’t hate her like that,” you insist, tugging at a strand of your hair.  
  
He rolls his eyes. “That’s why I didn’t suggest ash or pitch, chucklefuck. You two would kill each other before you even got close to the Condesce.”  
  
“We’d be terrible _moray-eels_ ,” you tell him in a morose voice, and he raps his knuckles sharply against your fins.  
  
“No fucking fish puns,” he growls. “Just think about it, okay?”  
  
He slams the door behind him when he leaves. In a fit of pique, you throw your chair at the door.  
  
“He’s got a point, you know,” Sollux informs you.  
  
Exasperated, you follow Karkat out, Sollux’s laughter nipping at your heels.  
  
.  
  
When she sees you, she blows a bubble in your direction, then leers horribly.  
  
“Take it ma threshie got to you, too?” she asks. She’s sprawled out in some strange chair that looks like most of a giant clam, her posture blatantly aggressive. It makes you want to hit things, like maybe her face. You try to imagine papping the smirk right off her face and fail miserably.  
  
“Karcrab has made his thoughts perfectly clear,” you bite out, settling smoothly across from her. You fiddle with the anemone lamp that she’s got sitting on her desk, running the tendrils through your fingers, ignoring the slight sting.  
  
“So you all up in ma grill ‘cause you anglin to pap ma bad self?” she asks, still grinning, and you want to snarl at her, but there’s a part of you that can see how Karkat’s idea would have merit. That smallest part of you, wondering if she’d looked at a tiny pink grub on mom’s tentacle and pitied it, just a bit.  
  
“Can’t hurt to try, I guess,” you tell her and she jerks, like you’ve hit her, her eyes going wide behind her glasses. Despite her teasing, you don't think she actually expected you to agree to it.  
  
“I ain’t gonna lie, I’ve seen pornos subtler than that, sista,” she says flatly. You laugh, shakily, because yeah, you guess you’ve heard that line before. Pap-or-die scenarios did, after all, make up most pale pornos out there.  
  
Carefully, you push yourself to your feet and make your way over to her. You hesitate in front of her, unsure, because this is the closest that you’ve been to her ever and you don’t know if you should slide into her lap or just kind of grab her horns and do your thing.  
  
She makes the decision for you, letting out an irritated little hiss and reaching up just as you’re leaning down so she can get a fistful of horn and hair and yank you into her lap. You freeze there, your fangs half-bared, and are this close to tearing her throat out when she paps you full on the snout.  
  
You blink at her, startled, so she paps you again, rubbing soothingly at the base of your horns. It feels surprisingly good, nothing like it had been with Eridan all those sweeps ago.  
  
“Shoosh, little starfish,” she croons, and you… melt.  
  
“Betta?” she whispers some time later, her voice hardly hiding her nervousness. You blink yourself out of your daze, staring up at her like she smacked you with a newspaper.  
  
“Huh?” you ask intelligently. Your bones all feel like grubsauce and you suddenly understand all the movies. You never had before, with Eridan being your only example. You clear your throat as she chuckles at you, the sound gentler than it ever has been before. You blush. It's a new side of her—seeing her this careful with you, this gentle. You think you might like it.  
  
When you try to struggle back up to your feet, she shooshes you down in between giggles, holding you tight so you can’t wriggle your way out of her lap. This close, you can see the resemblance between the two of you—when her mouth is slack with softness instead of a sneer.  
  
“Shoosh, princess,” she whispers into your hair. “Shoosh.”  
  
.  
  
When Karkat next sees you, he smirks at you so hugely that you throw a plant at his face. He dodges it, of course, and then you have to deal with him flinging expletives your way like dung bombs, but afterwards, he gives you a smug look and just says, “Told you so.”  
  
.  
  
By the end of it, killing the Condesce is the easy part. She’s fast and powerful, far from decrepit, but she could never stand a chance against the two of you, united as one.  
  
Meenah grins at you and you grin back, and everything is worth it to see the shock on your ancestor’s face as you stick a culling fork through her spine.  
  
.  
  
“If you don’t stop gettin’ your fidget on, I’mma pap you right on da butt out there” Meenah tells you, rolling her eyes and absentmindedly papping you in the face as you fuss with your coronation gown. Somewhere behind you, Rose snorts. Sollux isn’t as quiet as her, his snickers so loud that the crowd beyond the curtain can probably hear him.  
  
“But what if they don’t like us?”  
  
You glub at her. It’s horrible right up until she gives you a stupidly soft look and smacks you in the horn. You think of being annoyed about it, but instead you just pap her right back, maybe a little harder than necessary.  
  
“They ain’t had nofin’ in their lives as bright as you, glowfish,” she says, wincing as her horn snags on a low-hanging tassel. Once she’s loose, she grins at you again, bright and toothy. “‘sides, if they don’t, we can always just krill ‘em all.”  
  
“Fiduspawn, _reely_?”  
  
Rose clears her throat politely. You stop bickering.  
  
The curtain starts to rise.  
  
You reach for her hand and she reaches for yours.  
  
You squeeze.  
  
Then the two of you step into the moonlight, faced with a roaring empire that is _all yours_ —yours and hers, and you may still have your fears, but you know one thing.  
  
The two of you, you’re gonna do this thing right.


End file.
